聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

鮑明遠集

7 min read

Text ID
KR4b0011
Date
480–502
Dynasty
劉宋

Bào Míngyuǎn jí 鮑明遠集

Collected Works of Bào Míngyuǎn (Bào Zhào) by 鮑照 (撰), 虞炎 (編)

About the work

Bào Míngyuǎn jí 鮑明遠集 in ten juǎn preserves the writings of Bào Zhào 鮑照 (ca. 414–466), known by his zì Míngyuǎn 明遠, the great LiúSòng poet of the yuèfǔ and the seven-syllable line. The collection is also transmitted under the titles Bào cānjūn jí 鮑參軍集 (after his rank as xíng cānjūn under the Linhǎi Wáng 臨海王 Liú Zǐxū 劉子頊 in Jīngzhōu) and Bào shì jí 鮑氏集 (the SBCK title). Bào fell into the political turmoil of 466 — the rebellion of Liú Zǐxū against the new Sòng Míngdì 宋明帝 — and was killed by mutinous troops at Jiānglíng 江陵 in his early fifties. His scattered writings were collected after his death by the Southern-Qí Sǎnjì shìláng 散騎侍郎 Yú Yán 虞炎, on imperial command, and arranged in a recension that the Suíshū jīngjí zhì records as ten juǎn (with a Liáng-era ancestor of six juǎn). The Míng Zhèngdé gēngwǔ (1510) Zhū Yìngdēng 朱應登 print is the basis of the SBCK and the Sìkù-WYG; it was obtained by Zhū from Dū Mù 都穆.

Tiyao

By Bào Zhào of [the Liú-]Sòng. Zhào, zì Míngyuǎn 明遠, of Dōnghǎi 東海. Cháo Gōngwǔ’s 晁公武 Dúshū zhì says he was of Shàngdǎng 上黨 — a mistake; reading Yú Yán’s preface “originally a Shàngdǎng man” 本上黨人 misled him. Zhào 照 is sometimes written Zhāo 昭 — a Táng-period avoidance of the taboo character of Empress Wǔ 武后. Wéi Zhuāng’s 韋莊 line “wishing to render Zhāng Hàn’s Sōngjiāng rains as a screen-painting and send it to Bào Zhāo” rhymes the name in the level tone, which is wrong.

(Note: the Sòng lǐbù gòngjǔ tiáo shì says: avoiding the taboo of Qí Huán 齊桓 by writing Qí Wēi 齊威 — usable mid-line, not in the Wēi rhyme.) Shěn Yuē’s Sòng shū and Lǐ Yánshòu’s NánBěi shǐ, both compiled before Wǔ’s regency, give the name as Zhào 照, not Zhāo 昭.

Zhào served as cānjūn under Liú Zǐxū, Linhǎi Prince — was killed in the army’s mutiny. His remains and remnant works fell into disorder. The Qí Sǎnjì shìláng Yú Yán 虞炎 first arranged them into a collection. The Suíshū jīngjí zhì records ten juǎn, with a note: “Liáng had six juǎn.” Later hands evidently expanded the collection. The present edition is the Míng Zhèngdé gēngwǔ (1510) print of Zhū Yìngdēng 朱應登, said to have been obtained from Dū Mù’s 都穆 family. The juǎn count agrees with the Suí zhì, and Yú Yán’s preface heads it — but whether this is the Suí zhì-recorded original cannot be certain.

In the editing, yuèfǔ is set apart in its own juǎn; but the Cǎi sāng 採桑, Méi huā luò 梅花落, and Xíng lù nán 行路難 series are likewise yuèfǔ, and they are placed under “shī 詩” instead. Pre-Táng compilers all understood shēnglǜ 聲律 (musical pitch) — they would not have made such mismatches. Furthermore, in Xíng lù nán 7, the line under “dūndūn 蹲蹲” carries the note “jí writes zūnzūn 樽樽” 集作樽樽; under zhuó 啄, the note “jí writes zhú 逐” 集作逐 — if this were the original collection, why would it cite “the jí”? Plain proof of later re-editing.

But the prose pieces all have head-and-tail; the shī and fù often have authorial prefaces and notes, unlike other Six-Dynasties collections compiled from lèishū. Probably an old transmitted recension lightly meddled with. Zhōng Róng’s 鍾嶸 Shī pǐn 詩品 says: “Imitating Bào Zhào one can only get ‘rì zhōng shì cháo mǎn 日中市朝滿’; imitating Xiè Tiǎo 謝朓 one only gets ‘huáng niǎo dù qīng zhī 黃鳥度青枝.‘” The line “rì zhōng shì cháo mǎn” is not in the present collection — further evidence this is not a Liáng-era text.

(Translated from the Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào edition; the WYG 000.txt is missing in this corpus.)

Abstract

Bào Zhào (ca. 414–466), one of the YuánJiā sān dà jiā 元嘉三大家 (the “three great masters of the Yuánjiā era,” with Xiè Língyùn 謝靈運 and Yán Yánzhī 顏延之), is the foundational poet of the seven-syllable yuèfǔ line. The dating bracket here (480–502) corresponds to the Yú Yán recension under the Southern Qí (479–502); CBDB gives 414–466 for Bào Zhào’s lifedates, so the catalog meta’s “405–466” is incorrect (CBDB and standard scholarship both follow 414–466, the date adopted here). The collection has had a vexed transmission: 6 juǎn in Liáng, 10 juǎn in Suíshū jīngjí zhì, and the Sòng Wén xiàn tōng kǎo records both 5 and 10 juǎn recensions; Cháo Gōngwǔ’s 晁公武 mistaken claim that Bào was “from Shàngdǎng” derives from a misreading of Yú Yán’s preface, which actually says only that Bào’s family ancestrally came from Shàngdǎng (Bào’s actual native place is Dōnghǎi 東海).

The Tang-era avoidance of Empress Wǔ Zétiān’s name 武曌 changed zhào 照 to zhāo 昭 in some manuscripts; pre-Wǔ histories (Shěn Yuē, Lǐ Yánshòu) consistently have 照. The Míng Zhèngdé gēngwǔ (1510) Zhū Yìngdēng print, the Sìkù-WYG base, has internal evidence (cross-reference glosses citing “the jí”) that it is itself a re-edition not the Suí original.

The signature works are: the Wú chéng fù 蕪城賦 (a fù on Guǎnglíng 廣陵 / Yángzhōu in ruins after the Sòng XiàoWǔdì civil wars — one of the great medieval Chinese ruins-poems and the central inspiration for many later Wú chéng poems including Liú Yǔxī’s 劉禹錫 Xī sài huái gǔ 西塞懷古); the eighteen Nǐ Xíng lù nán 擬行路難 (foundational for the seven-syllable / qīyán poetic line as a vehicle for political and personal yuàn 怨); the Yǒu suǒ sī 有所思; the Cǎi sāng 採桑 yuèfǔ series; Méi huā luò 梅花落; and the Dài zì jūn zhī chū 代自君之出 yuèfǔ. Bào’s seven-syllable yuèfǔ model directly conditions Lǐ Bái’s 李白 own Xíng lù nán a quarter-millennium later.

Translations and research

  • Robert Shanmu Chen. 1989. A Comparative Study of Chinese and Anglo-Saxon Poetic Diction (Bào Zhào and Beowulf). Lewiston, NY.
  • Su Jui-lung 蘇瑞隆. 1995. Versatility within Tradition: A Study of the Literary Works of Bao Zhao (414?–466). PhD diss., U. of Washington — the standard English-language monograph.
  • Su Jui-lung. 2003. “Pao Chao (414?–466).” Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, vol. 2.
  • David R. Knechtges, tr. 1996. Wen xuan, or Selections of Refined Literature, vol. 3, Princeton UP — translates the Wú chéng fù.
  • Burton Watson, tr. 1971. Chinese Lyricism: Shih Poetry from the Second to the Twelfth Century. Columbia UP — substantial Bào Zhào selection.
  • Qián Zhònglián 錢仲聯, ed. 1980. Bào cān-jūn jí zhù 鮑參軍集注. Shànghǎi gǔjí. The principal modern critical edition.
  • Yìng Bǎo-wǔ 應寶武. 1989. Bào Zhào jí jiào zhù 鮑照集校註. Hé-běi rénmín.
  • Wú Pèilín 吳培林. 2002. Bào Zhào yán jiū 鮑照研究. Shíjiāzhuāng — substantial PRC monograph.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù compilers’ philological forensics in this tíyào — using cross-reference glosses (jí zuò … 集作 …) to expose a re-editing layer, and the Wǔ Zétiān taboo to date zhào/zhāo manuscript variants — are model exercises of Qiánlóng-era kǎo zhèng method. The taboo evidence in particular dates the zhāo 昭 spelling to a narrow Wǔ Zétiān window (684–705), which becomes a useful manuscript-stratification tool elsewhere in the corpus.

Graph View

Backlinks